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No one can easily escape the stories of the World Cup; you only have to notice the behaviors of the heads of state of the participating countries to realize the importance of the matter. Not because a presidential meeting ends up discussing the safety of a single football goal, or because a cabinet meeting is closed as the president is busy following an important match, but because presidents do this not only because they love football or their national team, but because the nation's morale has become dependent on it, at least for a few weeks, after which things return to normal. And if you know that the media coverage revenues for World Cup matches have reached many billions of dollars compared to previous editions that were not similar to the presence in the United States, Mexico, and Canada all at once, then we have a mythical increase in the value of the match commodity; you only have to do the math to know what the situation will be like a decade from now. The number here is not just money, but a measure of overall global interest; the rise in media spending does not reflect only media interest in a hot commodity, but also the interest of millions of viewers, and a very large package of players, coaches, masseurs, and doctors worth billions more.

Even at the time of writing this column, the winner of the World Cup was not yet known, and who wins is not very important after teams that used to provide entertaining football have been eliminated. But all of that does not matter to the political world; rather, what matters are three things of historical significance that affect human movement toward the future. First, globalization is proceeding despite everything, and it emerged when the tournament was finally awarded to three economically integrated countries in North America, creating a historical precedent for global sports integration to be intertwined with economic and technological progress even as the world lives through one of its most critical crises. But geography was not the only phenomenon; the diverse colors, music, and culture of entire continents... all occupied the world's screens.

Quoted from Al-Ahram

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